[OS X TeX] Installing "MacTeXtras" using MacPorts

Bruno Voisin bvoisin at mac.com
Sat Mar 3 12:15:01 CET 2007


Le 2 mars 07 à 12:36, Peter Dyballa a écrit

> Am 02.03.2007 um 11:43 schrieb Bruno Voisin:
>
>> Le 2 mars 07 à 10:54, Peter Dyballa a écrit :
>>
>>> I-Installer uses or used (I am not using it anymore since I do  
>>> not want a geek TeX and unwanted preference panes, disk space  
>>> abuse, and ability to switch between coarse TeX distributions)  
>>> Ghostscript to convert fonts or do some other conversion (I don't  
>>> have the report files from i-Installer anymore and don't want to  
>>> restore them). All the Perl scripts that Gerben Wierda wrote for  
>>> i-Installer use absolute path names ("/bin/mkdir," "/bin/rm," "/ 
>>> usr/bin/basename," "/usr/bin/ruby," and many more) and so the  
>>> path to gs was coded absolutely, too. And since the Ghostscript i- 
>>> Package provided gs and installed it in /usr/local/bin, its path  
>>> name was coded as /usr/local/bin/gs. Even if you had gs installed  
>>> with Fink or Mac Ports the conversion did not happen.
>>>
>>> I also do not use Mac TeX (why should I download a set of CDs or  
>>> a whole DVD to update some 10 MB?). I don't remember for sure  
>>> whether Mac TeX did similiar things with gs as i-Installer did  
>>> one year ago (I assume it did not, it rather would have installed  
>>> the product of this conversion since it's basically a copy of a  
>>> TeX installation done with i-Installer in its basic mode), I  
>>> remember a discussion to install a version of gs that is X11  
>>> enabled, that could be used in xdvi to render PostScript  
>>> inclusions on screen.
>>
>> AFAIK both i-Installer and MacTeX check at install time whether  
>> X11 is already available, and if so install an X11-enabled version  
>> of GhostScript; if not, they install a not-X11-enabled version.
>
> BTW, for me it never happened that the X11 version of gs was  
> installed – and it never happened to me that xdvi was not installed  
> because I had no X11 installed. Even an X11 enabled gs can be used  
> for simple scripting.

Regarding my original assertion on GhostScript and X11: more exactly,  
when installing the GhostScript i-Package i-Installer installs both  
gs-X11 and gs-noX11, and checks whether X11 is available; then, if it  
is, gs is made a symlink to gs-X11, and, if it's not, gs is made a  
symlink to gs-noX11.

At least that's how I interpret the following fragment of  
ghostscript-8.configure (inside ghostscript-8.ii2):

if ( -e "${II2INSTALLDIR}/bin/gs-noX11" ) {
     if ( -e "/usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.6.dylib" ) {
	print "### ${PROGNAME}: Detected X11R6 installation.\n";
	system( "rm \"${II2INSTALLDIR}/bin/gs\"");
	system( "ln -s gs-X11 \"${II2INSTALLDIR}/bin/gs\"");
     }
     else {
	print "### ${PROGNAME}: X11R6 installation not detected.\n";
	system( "rm \"${II2INSTALLDIR}/bin/gs\"");
	system( "ln -s gs-noX11 \"${II2INSTALLDIR}/bin/gs\"");
     }
}
else {
     warn "### ${PROGNAME}: You are running this script on a  
distribution that cannot switch between X11 and non-X11 operation.\n";
}

And indeed on my setup, in /usr/local/bin:

lrwxr-xr-x   1 root      wheel       21 Feb 13 09:10 gs -> /usr/local/ 
bin/gs-X11
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root      admin  6711152 Sep 26 00:24 gs-X11
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root      admin  6589176 Sep 26 00:24 gs-noX11

I don't know whether $II2INSTALLDIR is hardwired to /usr/local, or  
whether it can be changed to your location of choice.

I'm not sure similar things are done when installing xdvi. I saw no  
such code inside texlive.ii2 (= the gwTeX i-Package), and I tend to  
think xdvi is installed in all circumstances. On my setup, in /usr/ 
local/gwTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0:

-rwxr-xr-x   1 root      wheel     1697 Feb  5 01:15 xdvi
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root      wheel   828324 Feb  5 01:15 xdvi-xaw.bin

and in /usr/local/texlive/2007/bin/powerpc-darwin:

-rwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel     1697 Dec 28  2005 xdvi
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel   828324 Jan 23 01:12 xdvi-xaw.bin

The actual xdvi is xdvi-xaw.bin, while the xdvi file is a script  
starting with:

# This is the xdvi wrapper script for teTeX, version 0.2.
# Copyright Thomas Esser, 1998. Permission to distribute under the terms
# of the GNU general public license version 2 or later.

# This script sets some environment variables to make sure that xdvi's
# resource file in $XDVIINPUTS/xdvi is read by xdvi.bin.

Regarding the conversion you mention, it's unclear to me which  
conversion you refer to. There used to be font conversion, namely  
conversion of the Latin Modern fonts to .otf format (possibly  
packaged as Mac .dmg suitcases, I don't remember) and installation of  
the result inside /Library/Fonts/Latin Modern. But (i) the conversion  
used FontForge not GhostScript and (ii) it's not happening anymore  
and instead the original .otf Latin Modern fonts part of the Latin  
Modern distribution are used directly.

On the other hand, GhostScript is used indeed in the simpdftex script  
(formerly altpdftex and altpdflatex) to produce a PDF file from  
a .tex source, by operating TeX -> dvips -> ps2pdf. ps2pdf, a wrapper  
to ps2pdfwr, is the bit calling gs, and it does not care whether gs- 
X11 or gs-noX11 is the default: it simply calls gs. This agrees with  
what you said regarding the use of gs-X11 for scripting.

There is also now (in MacTeX, not gwTeX, but maybe I've forgotten to  
update gwTeX to the latest version) a modified script simpdftex_dpmx,  
incorporating a fix by Jin-Hwan Cho to allow use of dvipdfmx as an  
alternative to dvips + ps2pdf.

>> [...] I must admit that I do not understand why you answer  
>> questions related to gwTeX and MacTeX, given you use neither of  
>> them and your instructions generally do not apply to the  
>> configuration mentioned by the original poster (or do not apply at  
>> all, owing to changes in gwTeX and MacTeX since you last used  
>> them). I must also admit that your answers are often so allusive  
>> that I simply can't understand them.
>>
>> Generally I just keep quiet, but right now I don't understand the  
>> acrimony in your message.
>
> [...]
>
> OK, I'll think once more before I start to answer a gwTeX or Mac  
> TeX related question!

Please forget that part of my message. I was having a bad day and  
should have refrained from answering. Certainly it's not up to me to  
decide who should post and to say what. Often I have difficulties to  
understand what you mean, but with answers bringing in some  
clarification I actually find your posts quite useful. The only thing  
is that I'm a bit shocked by your acrimony towards gwTeX and MacTeX.

Bruno
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